Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Committee Chair

Bruce Boyles

Abstract

This quantitative study examined how a teacher’s level of knowledge of ADHD impacted a teacher’s self-efficacy in student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management. One hundred and twenty-three teachers participated in the study. They were asked to complete surveys and vignettes to assess their ADHD knowledge and their self-efficacy. Each efficacy subscale was calculated to determine if there was a correlation between teacher knowledge of ADHD and a teacher’s sense of efficacy. The Knowledge of Attention Deficit Disorder Scale (KADDS) was used to assess teacher knowledge. KADDS consisted of three subscales with the first subscale being general knowledge. Teachers answered 54.7% of the questions correctly. The second subscale addressed symptoms and diagnosis of ADHD. The mean percentage correct was 51.5. The final subscale addressed treatment of ADHD. A mean percentage of 42.4 was answered correctly. These scores were not high. Another tool that was used to measure teacher knowledge was vignettes. These vignettes were used to examine teacher expectations of students using teacher responses to questions based on a series of vignette descriptions of hypothetical children with ADHD symptoms. The Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale was used to measure teacher efficacy. This was a 12-point scale that measured teacher efficacy in three areas: student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management. These subscales exemplified the teacher’s personal and general teaching efficacy. Overall, teachers exhibited mid-high to high efficacy on all three domains. In addition, there were no noticeable differences among demographic categories. A correlation analysis was performed to test for significance between teacher knowledge of ADHD and self-efficacy in student engagement, instructional practices, and classroom management. The findings were inconclusive about how cognitive factors such as self-efficacy and teacher’s knowledge of ADHD are related to their behavior with children in the classroom.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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